1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to magnetometers, electromagnetism and the study of magnetic fields and more particularly to an apparatus and method for the observation of magnetic phenomena, including the observation that the magnetic field produces a couple.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The apparatus described in the instant disclosure demonstrates that the magnetic field produces a couple and not a force, as conventionally believed and currently taught in physics. In this vein, a “couple” is understood to mean a pair of forces acting on parallel lines, equal in magnitude, opposite in directions, and at a finite distance that is non-zero and is known in physics as the “arm” of the couple. The apparatus of the present invention deals with the qualitative and quantitative measurements of magnetic field. The measurement criteria are a function of both displacement and time consumed per displacement. The invention thus enables measurement of the most desired perpendicular magnetic field as opposed to existing methods which work on the force due to magnetic field; existing methods are limited by measuring only the horizontal field, as the horizontal field produces a force which is easily measurable. Furthermore, the existing method deals with the magnetic forces. By contrast, the apparatus of the present invention measures the couple developed by the magnetic field. This method of measurement has been developed in view of quantum mechanics, but is not disclosed in either classical physics or known treatments of quantum mechanics.
Magnetic fields have been known for millennia. Current theories in physics view the magnetic and electric fields as different aspects of a single phenomenon called electromagnetism. Reducing electric and magnetic fields into a single electromagnetic field does not reveal, but rather conceals, the fundamental properties and differences of the fields of these phenomena. The geometrical characteristics of these three fields when experimentally observed have completely irreconcilable orientations with respect to their surroundings, and have different geometrical relationships to space, time and matter.
In 1820 Hans Christian Oersted discovered that an electric current produces a magnetic field causing a deflection in a magnetic needle when it flows over the needle. In 1831 at the Royal Institute of London, Michael Faraday experimentally observed that a magnetic field induces an electric current in a (copper) coil. At roughly the same time and independently, Joseph Henry in America and Heinrich Lenz in Russia discovered the same experimental results related to electric and magnetic fields.
In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss built upon these discoveries to engineer a magnetometer consisting of a bar magnet suspended from a gold thread. Using an improved apparatus of the same essential design, he was eventually able to measure the Earth's magnetic field.
Gauss also introduced a law related to magnetic flux. The Gauss magnetic flux law states: “The net magnetic flux through any (real or imaginary) closed surface is zero.” The magnetic flux through an element of area perpendicular to the direction of magnetic flux is a measure of magnetic quantity equal to the product of the magnetic field and the area element scalar.
In 1865, James Clark Maxwell unified the experimental results of Coulomb, Gauss Oersted, Faraday, Ampere and others into a set of four equations, known as the Maxwell's Electromagnetic Field Equations.
In one essential aspect, the present invention functions as a magnetometer similar to the one developed by Gauss, though it reveals residual magnetic properties neither observed nor reported either in early works or in current physical theories. Gauss's earliest magnetometer contained an element consisting of a bar magnet suspended from a gold thread. The present invention improves upon Gauss's magnetometer by introducing novel structures and features. These additional structures and features include, but are not limited to, a clear cylinder, the location of the magnets within the cylinder, and a suspended ferrous metal horseshoe. Additionally, a preferred embodiment of the present invention alters the shape of Gauss's bar magnet to that of a more effective horseshoe shape. While the prior art does utilize horseshoe magnets in other types of magnetometers, it does not suggest the use of a suspended horseshoe magnet, or ferrous metal horseshoe specimen as an improvement for Gauss's bar magnet. [See U.S. Pat. No. 1735, to Cook; and U.S. Pat. No. 1,143,529 to Garretson.]
Furthermore, the present invention manually maneuvers a suspended ferrous material in a cylinder also containing the source of a magnetic field. Gauss's magnetometer, on the other hand, was housed in a large room and was designed to detect a magnetic source outside the housing structure, most famously, the Earth's magnetosphere. Furthermore, unlike Gauss's early magnetometer, which was not easily assembled, moved, or resembled, the apparatus of the present invention is transportable and easily disassembled and reassembled.
Many other types of magnetometers are found in the prior art. Well known examples of later developed magnetometers include the fluxgate, Overhauser, and atomic magnetometers. [Cf., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,293,815; 6,977,505; and 7,038,450.] However, all of these later magnetometers utilize structures and innovations other than a manually maneuvered suspended ferrous material for detecting magnetic fields.
The attractive and repulsive behavior of magnetic poles are presently treated as being similar to the phenomena related to electric charges. This similarity between the magnetic and electric fields ends only at the attractiveness and repulsiveness; it does not appear to be inherent in these fields, and it can not be extended to an isolated magnetic pole, which does not exist in the way that an isolated electric charge exists. If a bar of magnet is broken into two pieces, two isolated north and south poles do not occur; rather, the pieces maintain distinct north and south poles. If the process of breaking is continued, isolated north and south poles are still never created.
One of the fundamental properties satisfying the Maxwell's equations and the Gauss flux law is that the magnetic field is space dependent, which is not the case for an electric field. A magnetic field is produced due to the motion of an unpaired electrons in an atom (of ferrous) matter with specific orientation. To produce a magnetic field, there must be a minimum of two unpaired electrons in an atom (or molecule), both at a finite distance in the atomic/molecular orbit, and those unpaired electrons must have specific orientations which nullify the electric fields of the two electrons. In the magnetic field, the space separation of the minimal two unpaired electrons and their space separation dependency cannot be reduced to zero. This is the unique property of the magnet and magnetic phenomena. There is no similar space dependency in the electric (and gravitational) field(s).
To show a geometrical picture of the anomalous property of the magnetic filed, we limit our discussion to two unpaired electrons, such as might appear in a Nickel atom (which can be extended to more than two unpaired electrons without a loss of generality). These two unpaired electrons, at a finite distance and in motion, nullify the electric fields under certain conditions and produce local magnetic fields at the atomic level, with north and south poles orientations.
Under a normal condition, most unpaired electrons in an atom are unoriented but have a domain of magnetic boundaries with local magnetic fields randomly oriented and so, nullify the fields' effects, resulting in zero net magnetization. When an external magnetic field is applied to the material, boundaries between the magnetic domains move and produce an observable permanent magnetic field. The north and south poles are located along the applied field, creating a permanent magnet. According to the Gauss law, with no motion in the produced permanent magnet, the magnetic field lines do not start and stop at any point in the space, but form closed loops issuing from the north pole and returning through the south pole.
Now, the forces associated with the magnetic field lines in the neighborhood of one of the poles, say north pole, are perpendicular to the field lines, are at the same distance apart as the electrons in the atomic structure. They also oppose each other and form a couple, like a spur gear structure. This structure is permanent for a permanent magnet.
As we move away from the poles, the couple structure gets weaker; the couple reduces to two forces, where the forces are opposites and are far away, appearing as pair of individual forces. These forces are weakest in the middle of the two poles of the magnet. However, when a permanent magnet is broken into two pieces, there appear new magnetic phenomena with newly added north and south poles and a force field structure associated with the poles.
A similar force structure also exists in material with two unpaired electrons. To easily observe the gear-and-tooth structure, a horseshoe specimen may be provided. When the horseshoe specimen is brought into proximity in front of a permanent magnet, it produces an induction in the specimen, and when given an up and down motion in the neighborhood of a pole, it rotates as if it is moving with a spur gear. The inventive apparatus reveals the couple force structure in the rotational motion of the horseshoe specimen.